Forest Service greases the skids for oil and gas

U.S. Forest Service officials say
they’re overwhelmed by the recent flood of permit
applications from energy companies. On the Dakota Prairie National
Grassland alone, drilling permit applications have jumped from 20
to 110 during the past year. To ease the workload, the agency wants
to stop doing full-scale environmental assessments on smaller
energy projects.

The agency proposed a new type of
"categorical exclusion" — a designation for projects deemed
to have no significant environmental impact, and which are
therefore exempt from the studies required by the 1969 National
Environmental Policy Act.

Under the new rule, drilling
proposals with up to four drilling sites, three miles of pipeline,
and two miles of roadwork would qualify for an exclusion, says Skip
Underwood, the Forest Service’s director for minerals and
geology management. The change would shrink permit-processing time
for these projects from six months to two. Projects planned for
wilderness areas, inventoried roadless areas, or designated
critical habitat would still require a full environmental
assessment.

Environmentalists say the change would allow
the Forest Service to approve multiple small projects in an area
without considering their cumulative effects. "A bunch of one-mile
roads all over (an area) is going to have a huge impact," says
Wayde Schafer of the Sierra Club’s North Dakota chapter.
Critics add that the new rule cuts the public out of project
planning and makes uninventoried roadless areas more vulnerable to
drilling.

The proposed rule change will be published in
the Federal Register shortly, Underwood says. The public will then
have 60 days to comment before the Forest Service publishes a final
version of the rule.